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Slated for release in early 2010, a project by Visceral Games lets you play the underworld explorer: Dante's Inferno. Your guide is still Virgil, although he plays a smaller role than in Dante's poem:

Once in Hell, you meet Virgil in Limbo. In contrast to the poem,
Dante doesn't actually follow the guy around. Instead, Virgil just
appears every so often and speaking to him is optional. He just sort
of floats around narrating our hero's tale. Poor Virgil, his job must
really suck.

And yes, your job is primarily to kill demons -- but the visuals are amazing!

As Dante travels through each circle of Hell, Beatrice's spirit remains
beyond his grasp. Meanwhile, he has to face his own sins at every
stage, like he's stuck within his personal Hell while traveling through
Lucifer's domain.

The devs point out that their Dante is an extreme reimagining of the 13th century poet and policitian who authored the Divine Comedy,
which is rather obvious from the start. Not only is this guy running
around with a scythe nearly twice his size, he's actually quite apt
with it, butchering defenseless demons and what not.

Players
will find series of brutal animations to discover, depending on how you
want to finish off your enemies, and that scythe allows Dante to
control certain (very large) demons by shoving the blade in their
skulls. Hey, there are worst ways to travel in Hell than riding on the
back / head of a giant rampaging abomination. Phlegyas, pictured
above, is just one of many such monstrosities you'll be hitching a ride
on.

...

But I can't reiterate how engrossing the visuals are for this game, especially if you're familiar with the original Divine Comedy;
the devs have made en effort to design the characters as they are
described in the poem, "only angrier," given that everything is now
trying to kill Dante instead of letting him pass through with somber
indifference.

A nice example of this
is the blind King Minos, Judge of the Dead, who appears in the game as
Aligheri portrays -- a monstrous hybrid between man and snake. In the
poem, he "shakes the urn and calls on the assembly of the silent, to
learn the lives of men and their misdeeds," his tail wrapping around
his body a number of times equal to the soul's assigned level of Hell.
In the game, he is still rather ugly and... tries to kill Dante. If
you manage to defeat him, you'll be treated to a graphic death-scene,
involving a spiked wheel and Minos' tongue. Go ahead and fill in the
blanks on that one.